As our site grows every day we want to share some information with you on the way we are operating the project. We call this section «Business Blog» as it is similar to doing a log book where data is recorded in a chronological order. «Blogging» is gaining popularity with more and more people picking up the habit of publishing their experiences and thoughts on the Internet. Our Blog covers various topics — from TOEFL, TOEIC, MBA, GMAT, ESL/EFL test preperation to cultural traditions and current political events.
There will also be some Internet marketing terminology and if you have any questions regarding the information simply let us know.

The Business Blog is written by Torsten Daerr and edited by Alan Townend.

2003 — October 24
While I was strolling through the city centre yesterday afternoon eating my fish and chips a man approached me and asked me for some small change. First of all I walked on because I was feeling too relaxed and was deep in thought but then I saw that the man had only got one arm and I came to my senses. He had already continued his way down the street so I almost ran to catch up with him. He thanked me for the Euro I gave him and then I thought that it was actually me who should have thanked him as he reminded me of how lucky and well off I am. How often do we forget to appreciate what we have and yet want more instead? I guess it happens all the time. When I opened my email a few hours later I found a new test Alan had written and interestingly enough it is all about money…

2003 — October 23
Raymond Romanos, an American English language trainer and friend of mine has written a new article on how his son Elias has been learning English. Elias was born in Germany where he now lives and Ray speaks English with him most of the time so that his son is growing up bilingual. I have met Elias a couple of times in person and it's very interesting to see how he can switch between both languages — English and German. In his article Ray describes some funny constructions Elias is using when he speaks English because the German obviously interferes. One of the major differences between the two languages is word order — with German being much stricter and English providing more flexibility.
As I mentioned before — a language expresses the mentality of its speakers and you can draw some interesting conclusions from the way the Germans speak. Fortunately language is not a static thing — it constantly develops and changes and the people who speak two languages fluently are the promoters of this change…

2003 — October 22
It's exciting to see how the popularity of our site is constantly growing. We currently have quite a high position at Alexa's traffic rank system. (for the current position click here). Alexa.com was founded in April 1996 as a subsidiary of Amazon.com — the world's largest online book retailer. Its main purpose is to provide internet users with the opportunity to actively evaluate a website's usefulness. You can pick any website that is listed in Alexa's index to write and submit a review. Your review will be displayed for all users to read. In addition Alexa measures the traffic a certain website receives using two factors — «reach» and «page views per user». The former expresses the percentage of all internet users who visit a given site and this is expressed as number of users per million. It takes some time to comprehend the system but once you do it all makes perfect sense...

2003 — October 21
In our forum an interesting discussion has started about blogs. This is a new word made up of «web» and «log» so it's an electronic diary run on the web. Most blogs are personal websites featuring links to sites and pages of interest, commentaries on current events and developments. New entries to the blog go on top and older items flow down the page. Blogs also can be political journals that in some cases reach a tremendous level of popularity and consequently influences the opinion of their readers. Good blogs can become addictive by making its users return daily not wanting to miss one single entry. Google has recognized this potential and purchased one of the most popular blog sites — www.blogger.com
It will take time though, until blooger.com really gets the functionality and usability Google has itself. So far there is no Corporate Identity to be recognized…